Magic, the first of the sciences, the first of the religions. It was in the age of darkness, when man feared the vermin of the night and disease. Rituals conquered fear and instilled in the group a sense of security that made them feel strong and invincible.

Magic was the culture of our ancestors. Magical practices reflected the community’s feelings, its yearnings and its most vital needs. Man then lived in permanent contact with nature and sought in its forces and its laws the answer to his questions.

Under those laws man began the path that would lead him to civilization. Observing what happened in his surroundings, he came to apply the laws of nature to his own existence, and his continuous search for perfection led him to create from them an organization of his social environment.

Those first laws were never moralizing; they merely sought a proper social organization, leaving absolute freedom of worship and of thought.

The masterpiece that Roman law came to be was annihilated by the moralizing and radical religious currents that came from the Jewish world, such as Christianity.

Much earlier, peoples of great historical importance never imposed a fixed cult or a specific moral conduct; on the contrary, they were always willing to learn about everything that happened beyond their borders. But then came the shadow of the Jewish religion, that of the “chosen people” guided by a jealous god, willing to exterminate all those peoples who would not worship him. Idolaters were those who, in freedom, chose their own spiritual option, and the punishment Yahveh reserved for them was death on earth and the fires of hell in the afterlife.

It is curious to note how the peoples of Asia Minor or the so-called Fertile Crescent never waged religious wars; all of them were political and economic. Religious cults were enriched by contact with other, different cults.

With the arrival of the religions of Jewish, Muslim and Christian origin, the terrible wars of religion begin. The gods of love, of wine, of fertility, of the sun or the moon fall crushed by the fanatical hordes of the new omnipotent god. One could kill, torture, rape: an infidel was not a human being, only an animal to be exterminated.

Then came the darkness of knowledge, lit only by the bonfires in which free-thinking souls were burned. Man’s genius could only be expressed if placed at the service of that terrible god. Painting, sculpture, music could have no other purpose than to praise him.

The magic that gave man courage, security and greater freedom was replaced by the terror and tyranny of the Muslim-Christian monotheistic religion.

But it is impossible to keep human nature enslaved. Its desire for knowledge and freedom keeps overcoming the old bonds and returning to the pure waters of the old wisdom that is part of the nature of our world.